But, before my co-op….Bethany finished her last peer reviewed guitar exercise and last writing assignment. It was the first time that we recorded the melody and chords and put them together – it sounds better in the beginning, then the chords get off a bit from the melody, but not bad for the first time doing that. Hannah and Grace were at separate sleepovers and I got a call right before the co-op that Grace threw up. I wasn’t sure if it was something she ate, the smoke or what. She seemed fine at the library, though she was tired and spent the whole time asleep in the closet (it was cool and dark in there.)
OK, so for the lab everyone brought some gum. You could tell that most of us don’t normally give our kids gum (Hannah had 15 pieces of Trident gum in her mouth before the class even started!)
The first thing we did was look at the gum and notice its shape – was it a cube, rectangular prism, sphere? Then everyone weighed one piece of gum (later we would weigh it after chewing.) We commenced chewing the gum and talked about whether it was undergoing a physical or chemical change.
Everyone thought physical after I explained both of them. We talked about what was happening to the gum, why was it getting soft – saliva or temperature or both? Everyone came up and got a cup of ice cold water to drop their gum in, the gum changed back into a solid – so temperature has a lot to do with gum changing from solid to semi-solid. We blew bubbles and measured the diameter (to later record the circumference of the bubbles) and talked about how the gum was now full of gas. The sugar-free gum blew from 2-4 cm diameter and the gum with sugar was ranging from 4-10 cm in diameter (we probably would have recorded bigger bubbles if we had tried again at the end of the co-op.) The kids came up and weighed their gum again, amazing results! I sent home a reminder that we had not talked about the fact that the weight and density of the gum had changed even though the mass remained the same.
Then we got to do the fun part that no one every lets you do with gum – take it out of your mouth and stretch it as far as you could.
The sugar-free gum was ranging from 12-24 inches and the sugared gum all the way up to 4 feet! (They were measuring one piece of gum, except for Hannah, she had about 5 pieces in her mouth.)
We noted the color change too, the Orbitz gum went from purple to gray, the other gums pretty much stayed the same color.
Lastly, I asked the kids to come up with their own imaginary gum.
They had to tell me what color, flavor and shape the gum was going to be, create a package for the gum, price it, and they could create a jingle for it too. We had Cora’s mystery space gum (only $1.01!), her jingle was, ‘C-O-R-A-S gum, Cora’s gum!’ with a little tune that went up and down and she actually used some chewed gum to attach her wrapper design to the package design paper (well, you don’t have any tape she said, touche!)
We had Coconut gum, Peach Paradise gum, Cinnamon toast flavored gum and more.
Alanna made A’s bubbles, this is her package and the wrapper for the pina colada flavored gum.
I liked Andrew’s:
it’s bacon flavored gum (very popular right now), he’s skating on thin ice with a trademark lawyer using Bubba Hubba as the gum name, also his jungle was, ‘Brown bacon, yum!’ which sounded just like the Red robin jingle, his ingredients are corn syrup and stuff, the gum costs $100 and you only get 1 cm of gum in the container. But hey, if you’re going to dream, dream big! T made a gum that was pineapple flavored with pop rocks in it, I like the packaging – it’s like see through dice.
I did not get pictures of all the work, but they were all great.
That was a fun co-op and here is some more fun stuff about gum:
-During WWII, U.S. military personnel spread the popularity of chewing gum by trading it and giving it as gifts to people in Europe, Africa, Asia and around the world.
-Cinnamon, spearmint and peppermint are among the most popular flavors of chewing gum today.
-Chewing gum while cutting onions can help a person from producing tears.
-The color of the first successful bubble gum was pink because it was the only color the inventor had left. The color “stuck,” and today bubble gum is still predominantly pink.
-The largest bubble ever blown was 23 inches in diameter. The record was set July 19, 1994 by Susan Montgomery Williams of Fresno, CA.
-Blibber-Blubber, a failed attempt at bubble gum, was invented in 1906 but was deemed too sticky to sell.
-The ancient Mayans chewed plain chiclé. That’s a latex sap from the sapodilla tree.
-Swallowed gum won’t clog up your intestines, but it will be with you for a few days. Gum base can’t be digested so it will pass through your system in one piece.
-Singapore has tried to completely forbid gum, with heavy fines of over $6,000 for possession or use without a prescription.
-Studies have shown that chewing gum actually helps people concentrate and may improve long-term and working memory. Chewing gum has also been shown to reduce muscle tension and increase alertness.
-Turkey is the country with the most gum companies; the United States is second.
-Chewing gum burns around 11 calories per hour.
-In 2006 the world-wide chewing gum industry was estimated to be worth $19 billion in sales, or 1.3 million metric tons of gum.
-Chewing gum on an airplane will keep your ears from popping. Chewing gum makes your salivary glands produce 250% more saliva than normally, so you swallow more. This helps balance the pressure in your head.
-In the U.S. alone, the total amount of chewing gum sold in one year would make a stick 3.5 million miles (5.6 million km) long. That’s long enough to reach the moon and back seven times or to circle the earth’s equator 150 times.
-Chewing gum after meals may help prevent heartburn.
-The largest piece of bubble gum ever was the size and weight of 10,000 regular pieces and was presented to baseball player Willie Mays by the Topps Chewing Gum Company in June 1974.
-Back in the 1920’s, prohibition increased gum sales because people needed to mask the alcohol on their breath. When prohibition was enacted, Adam’s Clove gum hit the market with the slogan: “It takes your breath away!”
-Chewing gum was illegal in all of Eastern Europe until Czechoslovakia began manufacturing it in 1957. Poland and East Germany quickly followed suit, but it was not until 1976 that the Soviet Union lifted its ban on gum.
-Humans are the only animals on earth that chew gum. If you give a monkey a piece he will chew it for a couple of minutes, then he will take it out and stick it to his hair.
